Speaking at an event at AT&T recently, I met many people who had been with the company for 20 or even 35 years. Working at AT&T ran in their family. They remembered coming to the massive campus when they were kids to attend the holiday parties with their fathers, who had also worked there for their entire careers.

Staying at any one company for that amount of time is becoming increasingly rare. Even people who seek out jobs at large, older companies in search of something stable can find that they may work there for just a couple of years before their division is downsized and their position is eliminated.

One of the benefits of staying at a company for a long time was that you usually did not have to worry about pitching yourself the way you would if you were trying to get a new job at a company that did not know you at all.

Sure, you might need to advocate for yourself in order to get a raise or a promotion, but you were still more of a known entity with an internal track record that everyone could understand.

Now that those very long-term jobs are getting to be more difficult to come by, it can often feel that you are constantly in pitch mode, needing to be prepared to sell a stranger on why you are qualified for a job at any time. It reminds me of our elected officials who constantly have to run for re-election and therefore almost never stop campaigning.

In the working world, it is important to have some sense that you can settle in to a job and not constantly be worried about what is next, but it is also important to be prepared in case something unexpected happens.

One way that you can prepare is by building in some simple practices that will make it easier for you to transition to another role when the time comes.

First, commit to updating your resume and LinkedIn profile at least every three months. Many people do not update this information for years, and then find that when they go back and try to remember all that they have accomplished and all the projects that they worked on, they have to spend hours combing through their files and emails and calendar to piece together the data.

Instead, keep your resume up to date by adding any core accomplishments soon after they happen. And keep adding information to your LinkedIn as well (although you may want to make sure to turn off automatic updates to your contacts so that they do not get pinged every time you add or change something).

If you just finished up a big project with a client or made a sale to a very satisfied customer, you might ask them for a recommendation on LinkedIn, or at least add that success to the description of what you have done in your current role. If you start volunteering in your community, add that, too. If there is a newspaper story about you or your work, document that.

If you have a personal website, which, depending on your line of work, can be incredibly helpful, make sure to keep your bio and other information up to date there as well.

Also, always have a list ready to go of people who you can count on to be your references. If you have not had to look for a job for years, who are the people you currently work with or have worked with in the past who can vouch for your skill sets and abilities?

Doing all of this may seem like pointless work if you have no immediate intention of switching jobs, but needing to find a new job is unfortunately not always a decision that you get to make. If you have been updating your resume and website and LinkedIn on an ongoing basis, then you will not have to spend precious hours and days updating your information when you could be using that time looking for, and hopefully securing, something new.

Jessica H. Lawrence is a former CEO of Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council. She is a respected speaker, writer and frequent consultant on business, nonprofit management, social media, and the technology sector. Jessica can be reached at jessicahlawrence@gmail.com.

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